Thristy

"Women yearn for change and will make great sacrifices for it." -Lydia, A Dream Compels Us: Voices of Salvadoran Women                      

On Friday morning, I traded my normally scheduled work day for a mental health day. One of my top priorities (school) had been counterproductive for a few weeks, because my attention span was crumbling under pressure. My sanity drowned in a debt of unresolved, surrounding crisis. My cup overflowed with anxious thoughts and chest pains interrupted my calm. My body went into "fight mode" and my blood pressure spiked. 

I was sick and tired of "being sick and tired". Everything inside of me was screaming on the inside but no one could hear me. People were fighting their own battles. In survival boot camp training, I was instinctively taught not to flinch at the presence of pain but to endure in silence. Because 9 times out of 10, not one was coming to "save you."

I quietly suffocated every time I closed my eyes and submerged my head under the shallow body of muddy water that surrounded me.

Connections that gave me life were outsourced because my diverted attention was stuck in the generational swamp of dysfunction.

My spirit man is a "whole vibe" by itself. It flows best from sitting at tables full of creative energy where there is an electrical charge so strong that I'm forced into action. I love being in spaces where people challenge my intellectual abilities and my imagination becomes unhinged from stale, conventional  routines.

However, my space felt cramped, confined and detached. My celebratory ceremony was interrupted by a desperate aura. My compulsion for expansion vexed the giant within. The internal famine nurtured a physical drought. The drought sparked a fire that lit a torch of smoke around my heart.

I thirst for rivers that flow from my belly, feed my spirit, and fill the empty wells.

I thirst for F-R-E-E-D-O-M.

"And he was very thirsty, and he called upon the LORD and said, You have granted this great salvation by the hand of your servant, and shall I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised? And God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came from it. And when he drank, his spirit returned, and he revived..." Judges 15:18-19 

Pausing daily to intentionally drink from his cup is the only proven way to satisfy this thirst.